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Asian Journals Rize, Turkey
Asian Journals Rize, Turkey
| Rize, Turkey |
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| Friday, 05 February 2010 00:00 |
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Friday February 5, 2010 Rize, Turkey Day 67, Asia mile 721, Eurasia mile 3527 Greetings Friends! We trust that you are all experiencing increasing intimacy with the Lord, and increasing fruitfulness in His Kingdom. That is our goal and also our prayer for you! We have found that our isolation on the road is forcing us into a new level of intimacy with God. He may have brought us into this ‘wilderness’ just to speak personally to our hearts, so please pray that we hear what He is sayiing! The prayer walk continues to take us along the south Black Sea coast, with roaring breakers on our left and tall, rugged snow covered mountains on our right. We will have to cross that mountain range in just over a week after we have entered the land of Georgia and are on the road inland to the city of Tblisi. The pass at the height of the land seems to be about 6,000 feet and filled with switch backs, so John will have some stiff climbs and I some tricky winter driving ahead. We are so grateful for the wonderful Turkish road system, but have read that the roads in Georgia are in very poor repair, that the drivers largely ignore the rules of the road, give pedestrians no right of way and drive at extreme speeds. I still have some fear issues about driving this camper in the best of circumstances, so please keep me in your prayers! In 2008 Georgia experienced some civil war in the northern regions and those areas have declared an unrecognized independence from the Georgian government, adding a heightened military tension to the country. The folks there are much poorer than folks in the west, and we have read that Americans in Georgia are at increased risk of armed robbery for cash and items such as cell phones, as we are perceived as being very wealthy by their standards. Violent crime is at an unprecedented high in their land, guns are easy to obtain, while many goods and services that we take for granted are hard to come by or nonexistent. The Georgians experience many black outs of electricity, fuel is not always available or is of very poor quality and the water may not always be drinkable giving many visitors traveler’s diarrhea. John and I are both experiencing some apprehension about the road ahead, also keeping in mind that the highway signs will be in Russian which uses the Cyrillic alphabet. Please keep us in your prayers for protection from accident, blizzards, robbery and any other mishap as in about 5 days we enter this land which is very foreign to ourselves, but very known and much loved by God. May John and I enter Georgia not intimidated by the fear of blizzards on mountain switch backs or robbery at gunpoint but filled with the love of God for those we meet. May His Holy Spirit cover the hearts of the Georgian people and bring a powerful sense of His presence to the whole nation. Amen! If we aren’t detained in any way it will take John about 3 weeks to walk across Georgia and into Azerbaijan. We’ll do our best to fill you in on our adventures along the way. (Hopefully they will all be delightful ones!) And if you have traveled there or have any information about Georgia that may help us along, please let us know. On March 3rd our son David flies into the Tblisi airport and will join our team. He has prayed much about this and has felt led of God, at a high level of personal sacrifice, to be a support to his dad for the next few months in this quest of circling the earth in prayer. We are so grateful to the Lord for sending David to us! He is a guy dedicated to seeking the Lord with prayer and fasting and has often been a great inspiration to his dad and me. His wife, Trisha, is staying home to work on her medical school studies, so may the Lord hold both of them in His arms as they are apart from one another for this next while. John had a police encounter today that ended in our having chai with 3 charming officers at a local café. He was climbing back up to the highway from the rocky shore where he had gone to answer ‘nature’s call’, and was hailed by the officers, who may have thought that he had just gotten off of a boat and was entering the country illegally. He wasn’t carrying his passport, and so they drove him about a mile to where I was making his lunch in the camper and soon all of their questions were resolved happily. They then posed for pictures with John and insisted on taking us for chai, so into the police car we went for a ‘ride downtown’. We had some great fellowship about the prayer walk and our families during our time together and then they later passed John again and pulled over to chat, this time like old friends. Please join us in prayer that the Lord will touch each one of them deeply with a sense of His love and grace. It has been an amazing privilege to walk across Turkey. I can’t tell you how highly we respect and appreciate the wonderful Turkish people and how much we will miss this country. Tears come to my eyes as I think of it all. We will continue to hold them in our hearts, as I know God holds them close to His. May every heart and home in this land be covered with all of the blessings of heaven above! Thanks to a financial gift from home we now have tire chains for our front wheels! Just in time as another blizzard is scheduled to hit this area on Saturday or Sunday. Thank you so much to all of you who are praying for us, writing to us and giving financially. We are trusting the Lord to provide all that we need for this venture and are so encouraged when provision comes in. We love and appreciate you all so much! John has taken some great pictures this week. You can see them in our photo gallery on this web site. Onward in Jesus! John and Sandy |
